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The founding principle of all the activities of Zdenek and Michaela Bakala is, truly, the courage, which must, according to their belief, always go hand in hand with responsibility.Visit site Bakala Philanthropy.

Cristian Riccio

Cristian Riccio

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Since very early on, I have had an insatiable curiosity about the functioning/mechanisms of life. As a child, I used to grow plants on my balcony and help my father in the vegetable garden. I used to experiment on them to study their responses to light and water. I also liked studying the behaviour of insects in their natural habitat. Later on, during my biology studies at the university of Lausanne, I discovered the field of molecular biology, and this intricate mesh of metabolic pathways and signalling cascades swiftly fascinated me. This seemingly endless complexity quenched my thirst for knowledge but it seemed that I would never get to know everything, even if I remained a student for all my life! The realisation that biological mechanisms are infinitely complex and that answering a question poses another ten came at a time when I was interesting myself for research, especially with a biomedical orientation. I soon realised that research would be a suitable activity that would allow me to always confront myself with new challenging problems and help me make a good use of my talents to improve human health. During a summer stay in Cambridge in 2013, I knew this was the place where I would like to continue my incipient scientific career. Studying next to the statue of Charles Darwin in the morning, having lunch at King’s college, whence so many great minds have come from, is a truly inspiring experience, which will come true thanks to the generosity of the Bakala Foundation.